Dennis O'Neill Case - Results

Results

On 1 January 1947, new Home Office and Ministry of Health regulations on the boarding-out of children came into force as a direct result of the Monckton Report. The principal requirements were:

• Each local authority was required to appoint a boarding-out committee, at least three of whose members were to be women and which had to meet at least every three months. The committee was to be responsible for finding suitable foster homes and to exercise supervision over all the authority's foster children.
• An official was required to visit every foster child within a month of their being placed and thereafter at least once every six weeks. They were required to submit a written report, taking into account any complaint made by the child.
• A doctor was to be appointed for every foster child and was to examine the child within one month of their being placed and at least once a year thereafter.
• No child was to be fostered or remain fostered by a person with any criminal conviction rendering them unsuitable to be a foster parent or in any environment likely to be detrimental to them.

In 1947, Agatha Christie wrote a radio play called Three Blind Mice loosely based on the case. This eventually developed into the long-running play The Mousetrap.

Terry O'Neill has published a non-fiction book about the case. Called Someone to Love Us, it was released on 4 March 2010, the day after Dennis's birthday.